


all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach

by brainjuicey (anzietyfreak)



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Bathroom Sex, Choking, Dominant Tommy Shelby, Enthusiastic Consent, Fear Play, Getting Together, Gun Kink, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Mild Painplay, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, but probably not in the way you think..., no beta we die like men, technically i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzietyfreak/pseuds/brainjuicey
Summary: Summary: In season 3 instead of Alfie being bought off by the Odd Fellows and betraying Tommy, leading to his son being kidnapped, he arranges a secret meeting with Tommy one night. He doesn't appreciate anything about the Odd Fellows deeds or control, and decides instead of betraying a man he respects,  he's just going to Not Do That.But then they end up doing something else instead.(pwp)Inspired by the Hozier song Arsonist's Lullaby.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65





	all you have is your fire and the place you need to reach

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!!i wrote this in one night until 3am from idea to edit so forgive me if there are any mistakes or disparities.
> 
> inspired by arsonist's lullaby and the Talmud. specifically the passages that demands that men, not only must fuck their wife for procreation, but fuck her as often and as best as they can, as their duty as a husband. and i live by that. period.

  
At the start of the end of a very long day, Tommy is sent a telegram with the request of an urgent meeting in London. In Camden Town.

He and John take the car and drive down themselves, as gathered from the letter this was a very quiet meeting, or it wouldn’t be under the cover of night. And when they arrive at the distillery, it’s apparently even quieter.

Ollie hears their car and comes out of the shadows beside the building and meets him at the window.

“Mr Solomons isn’t here. I’m- Can I get in? I’m supposed to show you where he is- Bring you to him,” Ollie struggles to get out, because it’s Ollie, isn’t it. John snickers at him from the passengers side seat but wisens up quickly enough.

“Alright,” Tommy sighs and fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, “John! Up you get, get into the back. I guess we’re not done yet,” John, sullen, gets into the back, “And why is it that the great Mr Solomons isn’t here, Ollie?” he grits out as he pulls away back onto the road he came from.

Ollie says nothing and fiddles with his hands in his lap.

"What are you, simple, where the fuck are we going, eh?" John barks at him.

“Turn left up here, please, Mr Shelby.”

A while later and outside an innocuous townhouse in a well kept but old part of town, they come to a stop. There isn’t another car in sight on the road. 

Ollie rushes to open Tommy’s door but he’s already out of the car. 

He leads them up the steps to one of the terraced houses. There’s a crooked rectangle protruding from the door frame that the boy puts his kissed forefingers to as he enters. 

Stepping inside, the three notice the disarray immediately. The foyer they step into is a mess; random papers ripped up, ash pouring out of the fireplace, unattended to and the curtains drawn tightly. John whistles through his teeth, “What poor beggars have been using this place as a shitting hole?”

Tommy glances around, Alfie is unpredictable and sloppy but… controlled and precise, and intolerant of mistakes. Untrustworthy, most of all, he tells himelf. The pipes within the walls scream out in protest as they pump water to taps nearby.

And yet he stands, silent and alone in his home. The pipes really are making an awful racket. More so than at home in Small Heath, even.

Ollie leads them to the stairs. The only noise is the distant howl of wind outside the glass doors behind the thick curtain. John is making a face that doesn’t need words, What the fuck are we doing here?

Tommy takes in the state of the house and it doesn’t sit right with him. Ollie grates on his nerves but he feels a strange pity towards the boy-man too.

“What’s going on?”

What Solomons thought he was accomplishing hiring the boy he didn’t understand. He must have his hidden talents, or else Solomons truly was just mad. “He’s upstairs, I think, Mr Shelby.”

“Wait outside,” he demands, nodding to the door he just came through. Surprisingly Ollie goes with John, leaving him alone. 

If Alfie Solomons is crazy for inviting him into his house unaccompanied, then he’s also an idiot for going in too, he thinks as he makes his way up the staircase. Treading carefully. The situation feels a lot like a trap, or a game, one he doesn’t want to play. He doesn’t have a choice though. He needs this alliance to work and how was he supposed to refuse a meeting with his closest partner?

A floorboard creaks at the top of the landing. It smells different to how he thought it would. For an intense man who always faintly smells like rum and the oak barrels of the distillery, the house was oddly homely and pleasant. Not looking like a woman had been running the house, with flower petals ornately arranged with perfume and slippers neatly by the door, like in Ada’s London home. 

Work boots sit outside one of the doors and Tommy slowly creeps forward, a hand on his jacket lapel in front of his holster. The muscles in his arms and neck are already tense after a long week. 

This is the last time I do a home call, he thinks to himself.

Tommy soundlessly pulls on the door handles of every room he passes on the way. All locked.

There’s light coming from under the door by the boots and he tries the handle. Unlocked. 

He opens the door and steps inside. Straight away the steam hits him in the face. Bathroom. Not what he was expecting. The air is thick and uncomfortable, the way other people’s bathrooms often are.

“Oi, that you then?” There’s a screen sloppily stood between the door and the wash basin. Tommy closes the door. There’s something at play here and he doesn’t like how it’s going. “Bit early, idn’t you? Right, might as well, now so.”

It’s pleasantly warm in the bathroom after the chill of the empty London street. The room seems more alive than downstairs, despite the sparsity of decoration in this room. The squeaking of the pipes, the sloshing of water, the sounds of heavy breathing.

Through the gaps in the screen he catches glimpses of tanned skin, the juncture of a neck, hair- everywhere.

“I can wait outside-” More for his own sake than Alfie’s if he’s honest.

He looks away hurriedly. Bad manners and all that. Plenty fine to have your fill of a look at a whore being presented to you but not your business associate. Although something about this visit gives him the feeling that he’s the whore in this case. 

“Nah, nah, you’re all good, mate, nothing you ‘adn’t seen before, now.” There’s a playfulness to that remark that sets Tommy on edge, because he isn’t the one naked but somehow still feels like he’s the one vulnerable in this situation. He wracks his brain trying to think of possible mistakes he could’ve made, loopholes he could’ve lost footing in and he’s just walked into a trap. In truth he has spent so long trying to outsmart Section D, the Odd Fellows, and their planned exploitation of him that he wasn’t confident in his vigilance with everything else. 

“Saw much worse in France, I’m sure, yeah,” he continues, more quietly but stronger, with none of the playfulness of before. 

With weary shoulders realising the weight on them in the moment, Tommy lowers his hand from his jacket. If he were to die here, at least his family would be safe again. You can’t hold anything against a dead man.

“I can’t say this is a service I require pay for, Alfie,” he tests.

“That’s alright, little friend, don’t plan on paying you, now did I?” Alfie fires back with the air of someone greatly offended, “So, right, yeah, you’re familiar with the original testament, unsullied by christianity and the western uncivilised nations? The Talmud, the word of God, yeah?” 

Tommy, with the luxury of being unseen, rolls his eyes, “Can’t say I’ve read it, no.”

“Oi! Don’t roll your eyes at a man in his own bloody house, very well disrespectful, innit?” Alfie yells across the room at him. 

Tommy glances to the side and sees that Alfie is leaning back in the tub with his head dangling over the edge, looking at him past the screen. When they meet eyes, Tommy’s breath catches soundlessly. There’s a power in it, passed silently and without acknowledgement, between them.

Alfie ignores him again and ducks back behind the screen, continuing, “Well that’s okay, now, not like we really expected you to quote your source material on the new stuff they’re spouting off in church, can we, no,” he answers his own question and doesn’t wait, “Well, the idea is basically, very simple yeah, very beautiful actually too, in fact. In all the   
I’ve read in my lifetime -See, I’m very old, and frail. That’s why I’m in this here bath, you see?” 

He says it all with the conviction of some who knows everything is untrue but is trying to see if you can figure it out too. Tommy doesn’t even know what the point of this is, so he replies in the smartest way he can, at least trying to proke Alfie into doing whatever he planned on executing tonight, “No, there’s a screen in my way.”

“Yeah, yeah, real funny, mate,” he laughs once, overly jovial, and then it drops back down to the low tone it was before, “So the writings, right, tell us that we’re writing little, lovely, little love letters to   
,” a sarcastic slosh of water accompanies that word, “and the general divine intention is to not do anything to ruin your precious gift to God, and definitely not take away someone else’s. Yeah, definitely not that, open defiance right, so the way I see it.”

Why is it still running? Tommy pulls at the collar of his shirt. It is stiflingly hot now.

"-And you, being an alterer of letters yourself I presume that you agree, mayhaps in the literal sense, yeah, might be…" he trails off suggestively. Tommy has no idea what the game of words Alfie is trying to play this time but he doesn’t like it. Why did he gain from going the extra length of meeting him in the bath? If he was going to blackmail him or just outright kill him, it would be better done in front of witnesses.

But John is outside. Solomons hardly has a gun in the bath with him.

This is not a game he's familiar with.

"Reading another individual's private, sanctified correspondence, yeah, has to be worse than killin' don't it, is what I’m getting at. Interfering with'- yea know, God and all," he says again.

Alfie’s voice has gone biting and tough. A loud commotion in the bath leads Tommy to believe he’s getting out. Instinctively he looks back over and catches eyes with Alfie, over the screen. Not one to turn down a staring match with the man, he doesn’t let go. Alfie navigates a towel and gets around the screen without breaking it. 

"Cause it's bloody right and dandy, say I go strangle you right here right now, that's my God given right with arms and hands, to strangle ye’, right? But a man’s mail? That’s criminal,” Alfie breaks the stare eventually to give him a thorough once over. He’s sure his cheeks are stained red from the heat. 

Tommy takes it and lights a cigarette. “I’ve had a long day, Alfie,” he gestures to the entire room, “the theatrics, really, eh?”

Alfie steps in closer and straightens up, Tommy notices Alfie’s actually taller than him when he stands up straight. He’s pure muscle and bone too, he starts to doubt his leverage as the person in the room with a gun. Pure brute power can’t be stopped at this distance. The other man is close enough to breathe in the smoke from his cigarette now.

“I don’t know, kinda necessary sometimes aren’t they, you never know what kind of…” he lowers his voice, “  
and Gods are listening about these parts, mate,” his stare bores into him.

Tommy takes a deep breath and glances back to the door. The pieces click together maybe slower than they should’ve.

“The telephones?”

“Rotten like cherries plucked too late, aren’t they, now yeah,” Alfie rubs his damp beard. He looks a mess; like a wild animal caged. Naked, unarmed, in his own home.

The bathroom. A peace offering.

“Is God listening right now?” Tommy asks, all fatigue gone from his body now. Panic not quite setting in, but anxiety sitting on the edge of his thoughts. His brain is working a mile a minute.

Alfie crosses his arms. The muscles flex and bulge as he does it. Tommy finds his eyes chasing their movements through the steam and fog. His skin is still wet, dripping. It makes him realise his lips are dry, he licks them. He can feel a hot coil building deep in the pit of his stomach, spreading down like hot syrup. The steam rising off his chest distracts Tommy for a second, but he gets no answer anyway. 

When it all fits together like a puzzle piece, itt’s sweet and strong, like rum. To have a grasp of control again over the situation he’s in. Despite the dread sitting in his stomach about Alfie Solomons who owns half of London, needing his help, he feels a small smile slip out of his calm mask. “You need me,” he smiles around his cigarette.

“Well… Wouldn’t put it that way, mate, more complicated than that, innit, yeah,” he rubs his beard with a hand and flicks away extra water sticking to his face. Tommy sees his jaw clench and again is fascinated by the body of a man he is fearful of.

Tommy raises his eyebrows, “Is it? Seems kind of obvious to me,” he looks down at the other’s bare body, naked skin, dripping with water. Alfie is staring at him hard. There’s an impasse in the moment. The potential danger of the situation makes his blood rush even faster through his body, making him feel hot.

And then they’re kissing and it’s rough, and hard, and Tommy has a hand on the back of his neck, holding him close. His own hands go to the shoulders he was looking at earlier but only now he gets to touch. His hands glide over the muscles and his brain stops thinking for a moment. Like the golden brown opium in his coat pocket, it makes his mind stop working itself in circles. 

There’s only their mouths together, pressing against each other and the steadiness of hands gripping tight. Alfie shoves his hands under the lapels of the coat and wraps them around the width of his chest, feeling the flesh of his torso. The beating of his heart pounding in his chest, reverberating in his ears. He feels almost sick with it, a hunger in the back of his throat to have more. 

Alfie shoves the coat off his shoulders and fastens himself back to his front, pulling on the arms of his holster to get him closer. The damp towel was slowly soaking through the bottom of his shirt, letting it cling to his skin. 

Tommy reaches for the knot and undoes it, leaning away to look at him, all of him. While he has a moment away from a strong grasp he moves down the body in front of him, placing kisses wherever looks like it needs one. He avoids any noticeable deformed scars or bruises, giving attention to the parts of him that are unmarked or hurt. 

The crevice by his collarbone, the swell of pectorals, a nipple. 

The oddly soft skin of his lower stomach. The hard, red and angry cock staring at him. He lowers himself to his knees the cool and hardness of the tile is tough on his knees but he bears it. With everything still on but his coat and suit jacket, he braces himself against the hips of the man in front of him and takes it into his mouth, pushing his tongue against it with all the saliva in his mouth. 

It makes a wet suction noise as it goes into, bit by bit. A deep rumble in Alfie’s chest spills out of his mouth in deep wanton cry and his hands shoot to a firm grip on the back of Tommy’s head. “Bloody hell, that mouth of yours could be put to work, you’d make more money than any peaky fucking blinder,” Alfie gasps out, “Like a fuckin’ whore, ‘idn’t ye?”

The things he says don’t correlate with the way he’s staring down at him with unashamed fixation, eyes hooded and staring like he couldn’t look away for the world.

Couldn’t do anything but enjoy the hot, wet attention of a tongue sucking up and down on his cock even if the entire house row went up in a blaze. The boiling heat of arousal was pushing him down on it every other second, fueling the fire in him with every hoarse breath leaving Alfie’s body.

His hands on either side of his head don’t push so much as grip, the only thing grounding him in the room. The sharp pain of his hair being pulled on every release shoots straight down his spine.

He doesn’t notice right away that one of Alfie’s hands leaves his head and reaches down to this shoulder, to the holster. He notices when the familiar pressure and weight of a gun resting on his breast is gone and all he’s met with is the flesh of Alfie’s thigh against his chest.

He stops. 

The cold metal of a pistol barrel stings against his neck gives him pause. Every muscle of the body tenses instinctively.

A moment of pure fear and arousal goes through him like electricity, he shivers and the back of his neck aches, the small of his back, slick with sweat drying to his skin by now finally becoming noticeable.

“So pretty sucking my cock…”

The cool weight drags up his neck and past his ear. It lands on his cheek and digs into the hollow, soft tissues of his cheek with his open jaw allowing access.

He gasps, his grip on Alfie’s sweaty hips are so tight it must be painful. Then the gun drops onto the top of the cabinet beside them. The wet, hard cock in Tommy’s mouth makes a thick slurping sound as he pulls off of it and gracelessly clambers off his knees and grabs Alfie’s dick in one hand, his neck in the other.

With a thumb under his jaw, pushing in on the muscle by his ear and his middle finger keeping a grip on the back of the base of his skull. Grips behind his neck and under his jaw, pulling his face up close. “D’you think tha’ was funny, eh?”

Alfie pants out a non-answer so he works his hand faster in tandem with his grip tightening.

Then he lets go with no warning.

“Oh fuck you, mate, right bloody tease so,” Alfie groans in disappointment. There’s an expectant and hopeful look on his face as Tommy pulls away. 

Once he starts working on his own top button, Alfie gets the idea and they become a rush of removing shirts, shoes and pants. The belt buckle clangs as it is removed in haste. Tommy moans against the hollow of his cheek when he digs his thumb into his hips as he shoves Tommy’s pants down. The contrast between the sweet slick of their hands on each other and the rough grabbing and pulling, it’s a game of give and take, and it’s every man for himself.

Alfie gently rocks into his leg.

“Now who’s the whore?” 

Alfie doesn’t answer, because of course he doesn’t. He just keeps rocking up into him like an animal rutting mindlessly. The lack of inhibitions is all Tommy needs to shift the control in the power dynamic to him. 

“Will you be my whore? Yeah?” With no answer again he fights for a hand down between them. He slips a finger down past his cock, to his balls, and lower, to the vulnerable skin between his balls and his hole.

“Nah, no, no,” Alfie mutters.

Tommy pulls his hand away and leans away from him, a knot of anxiety tangling through him mixing in with the pure rush of adrenaline and hot heat. “No?” He dodges Alfie’s hand and holds him by the side of his face. He looks into his eyes and squints.

Alfie looks down and then back at him. “Not like that, alright? Yeah, not right now, right, okay?”

Tommy nods and leans in to kiss him again. Their mouths are opening and biting again before another moment passes and they’re back to grinding against each other for release.

Heavy breathing from them both and a pained whimper from Alfie, but it could’ve been him, he can’t tell. Their noises are just blending together into noises they are making. A groan as he fists his wet sloppy meat in the same rhythm as before, and now that he’s naked every inch of their bodies touching lights him up.

The softness of breath against his clammy skin sends goosebumps rushing up his neck. The small of his back curls and bucks forward instinctively. One of Alfie’s legs, the bad one, opens up for him and they slot together.  
He would die if it stopped, if he didn’t get to be in him, on every inch of him right now. But he said no, so he makes do. 

Something more important comes to mind. The question from before, of being needed. He feels the ache thump through his entire body with the knowledge that he needs, needs to be needed.

If Alfie needs him, he has the control here, the leverage.   
“Say you need me,” he slides their cocks together, letting his own saliva wet them both to grind together better. 

He hits hard and surges into their messy making out and his cock nudges into the gap of his thighs.

“Compromise? Eh?”

The muscles spasming and forming a tight space to fit himself into, gripping the head of his cock at the other edge of his legs. Every thrust out bumps against Alfie’s hand holding his own cock steadily pumping in time.

He groans into the side of his throat and Alfie shivers, his back arching and head dropping to his chin.

Holds him again, tenderly -almost- by the back of his neck.

He presses in on the soft tissues beside his throat inwards, enough to hurt, just a little.

“Say it…”

He uses his other hand to grab his wrist and puts it behind his back.

“The place you need to reach… if you want it, you need me. All you have is me.”

They pause as they catch their breath and Alfie almost seems like he’s going to fight back. His energy is fighting to burst out, they’re both on the very edge, teetering. Just one more push, and he needs him for it.

They both know the stronger man could easily break free from the hold he has on his wrist. Could probably over power him and take what he wants from his body, if that’s what he wanted to do.

He doesn’t break free though.

Like a dog on a lease he lets himself be controlled, fighting against it for the performance of enthusiasm and not genuine aversion to his role. He succumbs to the feelings and lets it happen, Tommy’s grip tightens on his neck and shakes minutely. Like a little rag doll, Alfie’s neck rolls to the side, giving him more room to find purchase against it.

He makes a small hurt sound from the back of his throat and instead whimpers out, “I need you, right?   
.”

He’s making him make those noises, with all the power to stop them if he wants.

He doesn’t want to stop them though, he wants to see how loud they can get.

He thrusts faster, holding his thigh where he wants it around himself and squeezing in on the other man’s throat. Alfie’s eyes fall shut and his rhythmic bucking stutters. Tommy feels him losing control and lets go knowing it’s the end for both of them.

His mouth opens wide and a guttural moan comes out. His grip relaxes then drops completely. He distantly hears Alfie heave big gulps of fresh breath into his lungs. 

His peak reaches him finally, he’s pushed to his limits and this time Tommy doesn’t pull away. He tips over the edge and releases himself fast and quick into the hold he’s made himself on Alfie’s body. Alfie’s still quaking by the time he’s done and spent, he holds the other man up, content to relish the contact in a hazy afterglow.

Eventually they peel themselves away from each other. Tommy walks with tender leg muscles to the piles of clothes left in their rush earlier. They don’t talk the entire time he dresses, a quiet hush falls over the room, except for their laboured breaths. 

With his shirt and vest buttoned up again he wrestles his holster back around his shoulders. His gun is sitting patiently on the cabinet and he takes it hesitantly, the memory of the freezing metal against his throat only too vivid.

He tucks it back into his holster wordlessly. Alfie retreats from the room as naked as the day he was born, his now-soaked towel slung over his shoulder and unbothered by his nudity. Tommy stares after him unthinkingly. He knows what they did and the ramifications of it, potentially for his entire business’ future. But he doesn’t regret it.

He leaves the bathroom sticky and sated, and with a new lead on his mission to stop the Odd Fellows group. 

“Leaving, mate?” Alfie asks, shutting a door quickly behind as he climbs down the stairs behind him. 

Tommy thinks better of it than to reply. “I’ve got to get back to Birmingham. Business is done, eh? You got what you wanted,” Alfie rubs his beard and clears his throat, without the decency to his amusement. Tommy rolls his eyes, “Eh, that’s what you were after this time, then? The urgent meeting, the bathroom?” A tinge of anger seeps into his voice.

Alfie crosses his arms and then unfolds them again, “Alright, mate, even if it were to have been my plan that’s not any of your business, innit? Because we both make our own decisions like the grown fucking, adult men that we are, right. And secondly, wasn’t my plan at all right, you were early. Who the fuck gets from Birmingham to London that fast?”

A massive brown mastiff trods into the hallway from a room Tommy hadn’t been in. The kitchen, if he had to guess. He kneels down to give him a pet. “Calm little creature, aren’t you, there’s a good dog,” he says quietly. He gives it a rough, satisfying rub down his head and behind its ears. 

Alfie continues like he never spoke, gesturing around, “was just a pleasant lonesome soak, yeah, in my bath and you invited yourself in, didn’t you- Oi! Hands off me dog,” he barks, no heat in his voice but full of indignation, just noticing the dog’s presence in the room.

Alfie’s right, Tommy knows but won’t admit. No matter what either of their intentions they both decided by themselves to do what they did. He stands again and fixes his hat on his head. He’s left John waiting for long enough. He doesn’t need to know- no one needs to know about this evening.

“I’ll see you soon, Alfie.” The finality in his voice might’ve caught on with Alfie because he didn’t continue with his ranting, mindless ramblings that always kind of meant something but not really. He nodded and set about unlocking the front door for him.

“Right then, mate, yeah, goodbye, good night.”

“Good night.” 


End file.
